Group Work Where One Student Does Everything
A lecturer assigns a group presentation worth 15% of the final grade in a class of 45, forming 9 groups of 5. After submission, three students privately report that in their groups one member did nearly all the work. The lecturer has no peer-assessment record, only the group product and a single group mark. Group 4's slides are excellent (the lecturer would give 85%), but the reporter says she wrote 90% of them and the other four contributed almost nothing. Group 7's product is weak (55%), but its reporter says the group met four times and everyone contributed, though one member was ill for the final week. The lecturer must submit marks in five days.
1. Can the lecturer justify giving different individual marks within a group when only a group product exists? What evidence would be needed, and what can be done in five days?
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Yes - a group mark is a measure of the product, not of each student's learning, and the course grade should reflect individual achievement. But differentiating now requires evidence the lecturer does not have.
What is missing: no peer-assessment record, no log of contributions, no individual accountability component. The reporter's claim about Group 4 is self-interested and untested.
What is feasible in five days:
- Ask each member of the three flagged groups to submit a short written account of their own contribution and their teammates' (one page, separately, no collusion).
- Compare accounts for consistency; where they converge, adjust.
- Hold a 10-minute oral check with each flagged group, asking any member to explain a section they supposedly produced.
Limit: Without contemporaneous records, the lecturer cannot defensibly move a student from 85 to 20. A modest adjustment - e.g. capping non-contributors at the group mark minus 15 points - is defensible; a drastic one is not.
2. How should the lecturer treat Group 7, whose product is weak but whose process appears sound, and what should change next term?
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Group 7: Do not raise the mark for effort. The product is the assessed artefact and 55% reflects it. The member ill in the final week should not be penalised for absence if the group confirms she contributed earlier; record her mark with a note. The reporter's account is corroborated by the group's meeting history, so no downward adjustment applies.
Next term - fix the design, not the students:
- Add a 5% individual component (a short oral defence or a one-page individual reflection) so the group product carries 10%, not 15%.
- Require a contribution log signed at each meeting.
- Include peer assessment with a rule: a student rated below a set threshold by all teammates is capped at the group mark minus 10, subject to the lecturer's interview.
- Publish the rules at the start so no adjustment is retroactive.
This makes individual accountability structural rather than an emergency response.